He Gave Her My Hospital Wing novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Drape
At the opening of the NICU wing she spent three years building, Della watches her husband unveil it as the Camille Gadsden Pavilion, asks him in front of the cameras if he asked her, and walks out with their daughter; the donor wall is in a stairwell and her return date has been moved without her. She tells the nurse manager she works Monday nights anyway, and the answer is that Camille asked for her shift.
The drape came off the limestone at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning in May, and every phone in the lobby went up.
I was in the third row with my daughter asleep against my chest.
She was seven months old and had been born at twenty-six weeks, and she had slept through nothing for ninety-seven days in the old unit across the hall.
I had spent three years and thirty-eight million dollars getting this wing built.
The brass letters on the stone were new to me.
THE CAMILLE GADSDEN PAVILION FOR NEWBORN CARE.
I read it twice.
My husband stood at the microphone with the drape cord still in his fist.
"Camille wrote the last check," Colt said. "Ten million dollars. Without her, none of these doors would be open."
Camille stood next to him in black, one hand pressed to her mouth.
She was the widow of his best friend from college.
The room stood up and clapped.
The news camera swung to Camille, and then it swung to me.
In the second row, the grandmother who had given five dollars in quarters at the church bake sale turned around in her good hat.
She looked at me, and she did not clap.
I knew her gift was in that building somewhere, in a window.
I had picked the date myself, the day before Mother's Day, so the first mothers could wake up in it.
I had promised every mother who ever slept in a chair that she would see the sky from this wing.
Colt had promised me one thing, three weeks ago, when I asked to see the stone before it was cut.
"Let it be a surprise," he'd said. "You've earned a surprise."
On Thursday the foundation's bank statement had come to the house, and Colt had carried it out to his car without opening it.
"I'll file it," he said.
I let him, because I had a baby on my arm.
Now Camille came down off the stage with her arms already open.
She took both my hands and held them, and her eyes were wet.
"Della, I told him no three times," she said. "I said it should be yours. He said you'd understand."
"Did he," I said.
"Please say you understand. I couldn't stand it if you didn't."
Her hands were warm.
She smelled of the same gardenia soap she had worn to her husband Dean's funeral, the one I had held her through.
I looked past her at my husband.
Colt was watching us with his jaw set, and he gave me the small nod he gives a board when a vote is going his way.
I handed Camille back her hands.
"Colt," I said.
My voice carried farther than I had meant it to.
The photographers turned.
"Did you ask me?"
"Della," he said, low. "Not here."
"Then where?" I said. "Where were you going to tell me?"
He did not answer.
He looked at the cameras, and he looked at the donors, and he said nothing at all.
That was the whole answer, and everyone in the lobby heard it.
I turned to the grandmother in the second row.
"One thousand four hundred and twelve people paid for these windows," I said. "I know every one of you, and I'm not done with this."
She nodded once.
Someone in the back started to say my name, and I did not wait to hear what came after it.
So I walked out of the Pavilion I built, with my daughter on my chest.
The donor wall was supposed to face the front doors.
I had picked the glass myself, and every one of the 1,412 names was etched on it in a line the height of my hand.
I went to look at it before I left.
There was a potted palm where it should have been.
I asked a security guard where the wall had gone, and he said they'd moved it to make room for Mr. Heyward's dedication.
He walked me down the back corridor to the stairwell by the loading dock.
The wall was leaning against a pallet in the landing, facing a fire door, with a strip of blue tape across the middle of it.
I put my hand flat on the glass.
My daughter, Junie, woke up and made her small, cross sound, and I held her head against my neck.
My phone buzzed against the glass.
It was the nurse manager of my old unit, who had written to me every week of my leave.
Della, I'm so sorry to send this today. Colt's office called on Thursday to say your return date is moved to September, and that you'd be resting at your father's. I told them I'd pass it on. I didn't think you knew.
I read it standing in that stairwell, in the navy dress he had picked out for the photographs.
He had arranged my absence two days before he arranged my humiliation.
I typed with one thumb while Junie's fist closed on my collar.
I'm on the schedule Monday at seven. Nights, in the Pavilion.
I sent it before I could think about the leave, or the baby, or the husband.
The answer came back while I was still standing there.
Della, you're on. Camille signed up to volunteer on Monday nights, too. She asked for your shift.
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